The modern Greek, in tolerable verse, If not like Orpheus quite, when Greece was young,

Yet in these times he might have done much worse:

His strain display'd some feeling—right or wrong;

And feeling, in a poet, is the source
Of others' feeling; but they are such liars,
And take all colours-like the hands of
dyers.

But words are things, and a small drop of ink,

Falling like dew upon a thought, produces That which makes thousands, perhaps millions, think;

"Tis strange, the shortest letter which man

uses

Instead of speech, may form a lasting link Of ages; to what straits old Time reduces Frail man, when paper —even a rag like this, Survives himself, his tomb, and all that's his.

And when his bones are dust, his grave a blank,

His station, generation, even his nation,
Become a thing, or nothing, save to rank
In chronological commemoration,
Some dull MS. oblivion long has sank,
Orgraven stone found in a barrack's station
In digging the foundation of a closet,
May turn his name up as a rare deposit.

And glory long has made the sages smile: "Tis something, nothing, words, illusion, wind

Depending more upon the historian's style Than on the name a person leaves behind: Troy owes to Homer what whist owes to Hoyle,

The present century was growing blind To the great Marlborough's skill in giving knocks,

Until his late Life by Archdeacon Coxe.

Milton's the prince of poets—so we say;
A little heavy, but no less divine:
An independent being in his day
Learn'd, pious, temperate in love and
wine;

Was whipt at college

Nine

"longueurs"

Or fills with love the pilgrim on his way As the far bell of vesper makes him start, Seeming to weep the dying day's decay; Is this a fancy which our reason scorns? Ah! surely nothing dies but something mourns!

When Nero perish'd by the justest doom
Which ever the destroyer yet destroy'd,
Amidst the roar of liberated Rome,
Of nations freed, and the world overjoy'd,
Some hands unseen strew'd flowers upon
his tomb:

Perhaps the weakness of a heart not void
Of feeling for some kindness done, when

power

Had left the wretch an uncorrupted hour.

But I'm digressing: what on earth has Nero,
Or any such like sovereign buffoons,
To do with the transactions of my hero,
More than such madmen's fellow-man-the

moon's?

Sure my invention must be down at zero, And I grown one of many "wooden spoons" Of verse (the name with which we Cantabs please

To dub the last of honours in degrees).

I feel this tediousness will never do-
'Tis being too epic, and I must cut down
(In copying) this long canto into two;
They'll never find it out, unless I own
The fact, excepting some experienced few;
And then as an improvement 'twill be shown:
I'll prove that such the opinion of the critic is
From Aristotle passim.-See Пoinrixns.

CANTO IV.

NOTHING SO difficult as a beginning
In poesy, unless perhaps the end;
For oftentimes when Pegasus seems winning
The race, he sprains a wing, and down we
tend,

Like Lucifer when hurl'd from heaven for
sinning;
Our sin the same, and hard as his to mend,
Being pride, which leads the mind to soar
too far,

Till our own weakness shows us what we

are.

perhaps

That neither of their intellects are vast: While youth's hot wishes in our red veins revel,

We know not this-the blood flows on too fast;

But as the torrent widens towards the ocean, We ponder deeply on each past emotion.

As boy, I thought myself a clever fellow, And wish'd that others held the same opinion; They took it up when my days grew more mellow,

And other minds acknowledged my dominion:

Now my sere fancy "falls into the yellow Leaf," and imagination droops her pinion, And the sad truth which hovers o'er my desk

Turns what was once romantic to burlesque.

And if I laugh at any mortal thing,
"Tis that I may not weep; and if I weep,
'Tis that our nature cannot always bring
Itself to apathy, which we must steep
First in the icy depths of Lethe's spring
Ere what we least wish to behold will sleep;
Thetis baptized her mortal son in Styx;
A mortal mother would on Lethe fix.

Some have accused me of a strange design
Against the creed and morals of the land,
And trace it in this poem every line:
I don't pretend that I quite understand
My own meaning when I would be very
fine;

But the fact is that I have nothing plann'd,
Unless it was to be a moment merry,
A novel word in my vocabulary.

To the kind reader of our sober clime This way of writing will appear exotic; Pulci was sire of the half-serious rhyme, Who sang when chivalry was more Quixotic, And revell'd in the fancies of the time, True knights, chaste dames, huge giants, kings despotic; But all these, save the last, being obsolete, I chose a modern subject as more meet.

How I have treated it, I do not knowPerhaps no better than they have treated me Who have imputed such designs as show Not what they saw, but what they wish'd to see;

But if it gives them pleasure, be it so,

Meantime Apollo plucks me by the ear, And tells me to resume my story here.

The heavens, and earth, and air, seem'd made for them: They found no fault with Time, save that he fled; They saw not in themselves aught to condemn :

Each was the other's mirror, and but read Joy sparkling in their dark eyes like a gem, And knew such brightness was but the reflection

Of their exchanging glances of affection.

The gentle pressure, and the thrilling touch, The least glance better understood than words,

Which still said all, and ne'er could say too much;

A language, too, but like to that of birds, Known but to them, at least appearing such As but to lovers a true sense affords; Sweet playful phrases, which would seem absurd

To those who have ceased to hear such, or ne'er heard:

All these were theirs, for they were children still,

And children still they should have ever been;

They were not made in the real world to fill
A busy character in the dull scene,
But like two beings born from out a rill,
A nymph and her beloved, all unseen

Oh beautiful! and rare as beautiful! But theirs was love in which the mind delights

To lose itself, when the whole world grows dull,

grave